Work-to-rule threat wins fresh talks at Glasgow Herald

1 December 2008

Management at Glasgow's Herald newspapers have asked for high-level talks about health and safety in response to a work-to-rule action by journalists that was due to start at midnight tonight. Executives from Newsquest from south-east England are in the city today prior to the talks.

The fathers of the NUJ chapel representing editorial workers on the Glasgow Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald will meet this afternoon to decide their next move.

Paul Holleran, NUJ Scottish Organiser, said:

"We have submitted a document outlining a hundred problems journalists have with the computer system and working practices at the Herald papers along with the results of our health and safety survey.

"Increased workloads and stress are leading to serious health and safety problems.

"The work-to-rule will demonstrate that there would be serious doubts about the papers coming out on time without our goodwill and will show the strength of feeling over these issues – people have had enough."

There was a similar dispute at Trinity Mirror's Glasgow titles in the autumn. The work-to-rule then forced managers on the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, and Evening Times to slow down the introduction of new systems.

Paul Holleran said:

"We won an agreement that there would be no redundancies as part of the changes, and that there would be talks about proper retraining and redeployment."